Thursday, June 20, 2013

Long Life And Dietary Patterns

Professor John Mather, director of the Institute for Ageing and Health at Newcastle University:

"All of these diets work on similar mechanisms," Mather tells me. "One hypothesis is that the secret about ageing is to avoid accumulating molecular damage, and eating fish, beans, nuts, seeds, legumes, whole grains, and not so much red meat, dairy or sugar may help us to reduce that kind of cellular damage." Sadly, the professor is dismissive of silver bullets: "In the early days we did try to link health with specific foods or nutrients, but now we look more holistically at dietary patterns."